


The Roads You Walk

by AndreaLyn



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-18
Updated: 2014-04-18
Packaged: 2018-01-19 22:05:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1485718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaLyn/pseuds/AndreaLyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything's perfect in hindsight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Roads You Walk

In the morning, the fog rolls into the city and blankets it with a thick cloud of pervasive invasiveness, fitting into every nook and cranny and filling them up like a demanding lover. San Francisco is cold and dark and damp, a month’s worth of Sunday mornings waking up to a drizzling sky and the regrets from the night before. Webster is leaning against the window and staring out at the dark city that’s only now starting to light up.   
  
The greys are tinged with oranges and behind him, Webster can hear the soft shuffling of sheets that says that Liebgott will rouse soon enough.   
  
He lights a cigarette in the square portal to the rest of the city and lets the orange burning filter cast a striking color in the fog. The smoke drifts and curls into the atmosphere and joins the rest of the grey, the strange cloud that seems intent on swallowing the city whole.   
  
He feels arms wrapping around his waist from behind and Webster closes his eyes as Liebgott rouses enough to be with him, giving his hip a light squeeze to assure his presence before he drifts to stand beside Webster so that they’re equal.   
  
Webster passes the cigarette and watches Liebgott contribute to the smoke in the atmosphere, that burning and strange fog that seems to make everything seem so distant.   
  
“Is it always like this?” Liebgott asks him.  
  
“I’m not the one who would know,” Webster says, even though his words are a lie. This is his concoction, this little place where they both can escape to. It’s his design and his to hold alone on the darkest nights when life seems as if it cannot possibly grow any crueler and then manages to find a way nonetheless. Through the fog, the cigarette will always glow brightly and always beckon Webster home as if his heart has been here the whole time and didn’t belong to musty books in a seemingly-ancient library.   
  
He leans back against the heavy weight of Liebgott’s arms and lets out a quiet sound of discontent.  
  
“Did you ever think that this is where you would find yourself,” Webster wonders aloud, talking to himself and talking to Joe at once, a double-meaning for their entwined bodies. “Here. With me?”  
  
There’s no answer to a loaded question and Webster shifts and turns his attention out to the city once more. The water is lurking somewhere behind the fog and there may be a future lingering out there past the haze, but it won’t be until it clears that Webster will know for sure. Hindsight is twenty-twenty and waiting too long yields nothing in the end.   
  
Webster turns and looks for Joe but all he sees is a war-torn bed and the remnants of disaster. Dirt, blood, pieces of machinery that the world should never have had to see litter their bed and he’s lost his cigarette somewhere along the way. He’s alone in this small room and only the trace of Liebgott’s warmth lingers with him.  
  
“Joe,” Webster exhales, the word sounding strangled as it passes his lips. “Joe!”  
  
“Web!”  
  
“Joe!” It’s a struggle to even speak, but he finds himself suddenly overwhelmed with sensations.  _Too much air, too much noise, can’t breathe, too hot, everything at once…_  Webster snaps awake and finds that he’s no longer in their little reprieve from the war and instead of finding a city under fog, he’s still in the crystal-clear peace of Austria with the grief and the grime of Landsberg still clinging to his body like an invisible enemy.  
  
One thing remains the same, though.   
  
Joe is still behind him, a warm and heavy presence that isn’t moving.  
  
“Nightmare?” Joe asks in a quiet voice, the kind that’s teetering on the edge of insult. Webster is never sure around that particular quiet voice, never knowing what might push it over the edge.   
  
Webster just swallows the lump in his throat and shakes his head. “No,” he murmurs. “Just a dream.”  
  
“That’s good,” is Joe’s tinny response. All that’s left to hear after that is the strike of a match and the room lights up for the briefest of moments in orange. Webster inclines his head slightly back and all he sees is the brief light in the darkness that’s trying to guide him to a home he thought was thousands of miles away.  
  
But maybe it’s right here.  
  
“Go back to bed, Web. We got patrol duty in the morning,” Liebgott coaxes as he passes the cigarette over for Webster to take a long drag. “War’s almost over, buddy, we just gotta get there. Just gotta make it home.”  
  
He doesn’t say ‘ _I think I already found that_ ’. He doesn’t say that, but it’s a very close bet.


End file.
